This Question is more directed to people who are playing things like Star Citizen or other flying games.
Hi, we try to improve our space flight module in our game, but the problem is, we don’t know anything about flying and we don’t have games we can play to see how it feels and behaive to have an example.
I have vague memories of GTA5 and San Andreas, flying the Lazer or Hydra was fun, but we don’t know what forces and physics are related to archive this kind of gameplay.
I’ve seen videos of Star Citizen, that looks the result we are looking for, but how to archive this without any knowlege about flying?
The main problem is rolling, tight curves, things that make flying especally in tight places exciting.
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I’ve tried the Jet from the Standart Assets, but thats not what i want and to be honest, i can’t control this thing, lol.
At this Moment, our ship feels more like a WoW Mount.
If you haven’t played Space Sims before, you have no business designing spaceship controls.
Some explanations:
Basically, a proper spaceship has six degrees of freedom can accelerate/decelerate, bank/roll, turn around, often loosely based on flight sim model.
At a bare minimum in a space flying game, you need following features.
Accelerate/decelerate key.
Fire at position mouse cursor.
Fire straight ahead.
Stop the engines at one button press.
Match Ship speed with the target.
movement prediction of target ( a small marker showing where you need to shoot in order to hit it the target when the bullets get there)
Missile lockon.
A decent control scheme, could be:
W/S to strafe ship up/down.
A/D to strafe ship left/right
Q/E to roll left, right
Backspace to kill engines
Tab to boost.
Left mouse to shoot at cursor
Left control to shoot straight ahead
Right moust to make ship turn towards mouse cursor.
Some key to select nearest enemy
Some key to match enemy speed
1-2-3-4 to toggle weapon group.
R/F (or Z/X) to accelerate/decelerate
That’s X4 flight scheme, simplified, but wing commander fans will want to use flightstick and different controls.
In case of flight stick, typically tilting left/right makes ship roll, pulling flight stick down moves nose up, and pushing stick forward makes nose go down, while either pedals, or twist makes it slowly turn left/right without rolling. This is similar to real life plane controls. Speed is controlled by a slider on the stick, and stick buttons control weaponry.
Then you need to decide whether you’re using newtonian flight, or aero-like flight.
In newtonian direction of movement does not match direction of the ship. You could accelerate forward, stop the engines (and continue moving in the same direction), then turn around (while still moving in the same direction), and fire at the pursuer with the main front cannon. It is much harder to control, however, so usually games offer “dampener” that makes ship behave as if it is using “aerial” controls. This is a realistic model.
In aerial model, the ship goes forward, as if it is still in air, or flying through some sort of invisible goo. Direction of movement is largely determined of direction of the ship, and the faster you go, the harder it is to turn. This works if you want dog fights in space. This is an arcade model.
Are you asking about how a space ship should behave, or how a jet fighter should behave?
I get the impression you want a jet fighter sim with a space theme, because you aren’t going to be pulling any tight curves in the vast emptiness of space.
@neginfinity : The sheme is some thing i’ve working on, but without shooting. The thing is, i have problems to figure out wich forces/speed i need to apply while strafing and rolling. Strafing is just a rotation on the x axxis while rolling usig x and y?
@bobisgod234 : Yes, i want it more arcade and easy, fast pacing and being able to move in tight enviroment, like Luke Skywalker at the Death Star.
You absolutely can do that. Been done thousands of times, in PRivateer and other games.
In REAL space with real physics, you won’t be making any curves, because required acceleration will pancake both the pilot and the ship.But it isn’t the real space.
Maybe you should try something simpler first?
If your ship is rigidbody flying brick, you’ll face fun problems, like rotation cancelling, but those are solvable.
Also you won’t be able to use euler angles or yaw/pitch/roll due to gimbal lock problem.
Strafing:
(A/D)- accelerate the ship left/right. (relative to the ship)
(W/S) - accelerate up/down (relative to the ship)
Q/E (spin, barrel roll) - apply torque to rotate around front axis. (relative to the ship)
Z/C (yaw) - apply torque to rotate around up axis. (relvative to the ship)
pitch - apply torque to rotate around right axis (relative to the ship)
A rigidbody ship should come with inertia dampeners to cancel unwanted spin and unwanted movement.
SO, if user wants to strafe right, you apply acceleration only until he reaches target side speed (relative to the ship)… Extra fun if you animate the strafing engines accelerating and stopping.
Same applies to rotation.
I’m not sure if you’re looking for a solution or some knowledge. I have an asset for space games that I’m sure would help you out. But I highly recommend that you know what you want first.
I can’t see how you can make game mechanics without playing many games of the same genre. If you’re really serious, you should be playing lots of games, hacking together prototypes and trying different things.
My suggestion is to start off with a rigidbody, a bit of angular drag, and apply torque with input. Go from there, tweaking and testing things to get the feel you want.
@neginfinity : I would, i’ve i had the money, but i can’t spend money on game just for testing and learning. But i’ve managed to get a GTA Lazer/Hydra like behavior.
I’ve forgot to mention that this game is directed to a more casual player base and a genre mix. Therefore flying should be just fun and not to stressful.
I believe you haven’t actually checked the games I listed.
Descent 2 is on gog, for $9.99.
X4 is $39.99, though, but X3: Terran conflict costs less.
Now, Elite 2 and Freelancer, apparently now are hard to find (legally, that is), but gog has multiple wing commander games along with privateer 2. They’re $6 each.
There’s also Void destroyer, Evochron Mercenary, and so on.
And that’s without regional price adjustments.
The point is…
You can’t really develop a space sim without having played one, and Lazer/Hydra in gta is NOT a correct behavior for the genre, because in space, there’s no gravity, even if you follow “aerial” flight model.
The games that are part of the “required reading” are also often old, and as a result, fairly cheap.
And given that flight model is the central part of your game, that’s something you definitely would normally research.
One thing I learned from releasing 3D space games on Steam:
Every game player has a different idea about how space ships should fly. If you ask a thousand people, then you will get nearly a thousand different answers. Since none of us have flown a real space ship, we are all just guessing based on other game and movies.
Generally speaking, there are two main groups: Arcade vs Simulator. However, each of those groups contains a lot of variation. Play every 3D space game. Then read the comments on each of those games. For every 3D space game, there are people who liked and dislike that game’s movement system choices. Unfortunately, there is no obvious preferred movement system for 3D space games. Factors like ship acceleration, drifting, momentum, and turning speed are all unique preferences for each gamer. Some people want an inertia damper, while other want ships to float forever. Some gamers want the mouse to directly aim the ship, while others want the mouse to activate thrusters to slowly rotate the ship.
The other issue with 3D space games is speed. Since things is space are really far apart, the relative speed feels very slow. Even if you make a realistic simulator, people will complain that it is way too slow if you have realistic speed. When deciding how fast ships should move, always experiment with the fastest possible speeds, since nearly all gamers strongly prefer faster speeds (even at the expense of realism). Basically plan for FTL speed in every STL situation.
No, it’s more a just for fun and exploration thing. The game is a management/simulation game, flying is thing to shake it up a little bit.
Feedback from testplayers is highly needet, but after serval posts and updates on reddit and twitter, there’s no interest. Therefore i’ve given up trying to find testers. Fishing for infos and publish it after finishing it, is the only choice we’ve left.
And yes, i’ve posted it here and deleted the topic after a month of no reaction.
And i’ve looked for the games but i can’t even spend 5 buck for a game atm.
I have a working Alpha with hours of content. I had a thread in the WIP Forum, but it doesn’t had any answears and just 5 views or so, therefore i’ve deleted it. I doesn’t post in the mentioned thread because i didn’t know about that.
Putting something on itch.io, or embedding WebGL or something on your own site, would be better than asking people to run an executable they downloaded online. And being on itch.io in particular would offer more general traffic.
And focusing on testers is probably premature if you haven’t yet made up your mind on the flight mechanics in your game. That’s the kind of thing you should have your own specific design for, that gets tweaked rather than completely designed by testers.
I have the mechanics in my mind, but aksing experienced players how other games did it is not wrong. I find the handling okay, i need some tweaks, but i want to hear some opinions.
itch.io is somethin i had on my mind, but i don’t think that this is worth it and it’s still an WIP Alpha and i don’t see the difference between my site or itich.io.
